Bressler Risk Blog

David Kluft asks: “Can I mediate a dispute and then later be adverse to one of the mediating parties in a substantially related dispute?” —

• “A lawyer served as a mediator between a sister and brother fighting over a loan that the sister’s LLC made to the brother.”
• “Another LLC member (Plaintiff) later sued the sister, alleging that the outcome of the mediation (forgiving the loan) was a misuse of LLC assets. One of the lawyers who appeared for the plaintiff in the new lawsuit was the mediator in the prior dispute between the siblings. The sister moved to disqualify the lawyer pursuant to Rule 1.12, which provides that a lawyer cannot represent someone if they previously participated as an adjudicator in the same ‘matter.'”
• “The plaintiff argued that the mediation, even though ‘substantially related’ to the lawsuit, was not the same ‘matter.'”
• “The trial judge actually bought this argument and refused disqualification, but the court of appeals reversed, holding that Rule 1.12’s definition of ‘matter’ is ‘not limited to the same specific case over which the adjudicative official, here a mediator, previously presided.'”
• Decision: here.

“Rehab Programs Seek To DQ Participant’s Counsel In Pay Suit” —

• “Several Texas-based addiction recovery program operators urged a federal court to disqualify a program participant’s counsel in a Fair Labor Standards Act lawsuit, arguing the attorney’s prior involvement with the programs creates both a conflict of interest and a need for him to serve as a witness.”
• “Timothy Wiseman, Wiseman Ministries Inc. and Wiseman Transport LLC said in a reply on Monday that plaintiffs’ counsel’s pre-suit involvement with the programs, including recommending them to clients and facilitating a participant’s placement, creates a conflict of interest and makes him a necessary witness in the case.”
• “‘Plaintiffs’ admission that their counsel recommended defendant Wiseman Ministries’ Recovery Programs to individuals, and even facilitated the placement of a current opt-in plaintiff into one of those recovery programs, is precisely the type of situation where the standard is met and disqualification becomes appropriate,’ the program operators said. “
• “In their filing, the program operators take aim at attorney J.D. McMullen’s prior relationship with the programs at issue. According to the filing, McMullen is a necessary witness, because he is ‘the only person who can corroborate, or refute, the statements made to him about pre-admission expectations for participation in a Recovery Program for a current opt-in Plaintiff.'”
• “The program operators rejected the plaintiffs’ proposal to limit any disqualification to trial, arguing that such a remedy would fail to address the broader impact of the counsel’s role in discovery and case strategy. The reply also emphasizes an alleged conflict of interest, asserting that the counsel’s prior endorsement of the recovery programs ‘materially limits’ his ability to challenge those same programs in litigation.”
• “By referring clients and facilitating participation, the program operators argue, the counsel effectively vouched for the programs’ benefits, creating a ‘substantive conflict’ between his ‘prior conduct and current advocacy.'”
• “They operators further argued that ‘actual prejudice to defendants is already occurring… The prejudice is not hypothetical — Attorney-Witness McMullen possesses information that should be subject to the normal discovery process, but his role (and that of his co-counsel) as an advocate for plaintiffs shields that information from proper examination.'”

“Ex-Thomson Reuters Employee’s Whistleblower Suit Highlights Controversy Over Legal Tech’s ICE Ties” —

• “An ex-Thomson Reuters attorney editor is accusing her former employer of firing her in retaliation for her reporting that the company’s products were being used to unlawfully compile and deliver sensitive data to federal immigration authorities.”
• “In a lawsuit filed last week, the former editor claimed Thomson Reuters sought to ‘make an example of her’ after she led a group of employees in voicing concern over the company’s contracts with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”
• “The controversy around Thomson Reuters’ data sharing is not unique in legal tech. LexisNexis parent company RELX and its subsidiary LexisNexis Risk Solutions, has also received pushback over contractual ties to federal immigration authorities.”
• “Since March, Thomson Reuters employees as well as staff from LexisNexis’ brands tied to parent company RELX have voiced their concerns to respective leadership and demanded their companies cut contracts with the federal immigration authorities.”
• “In the lawsuit filed last week, captioned Little v. Thomson Reuters, former senior attorney editor Billie Little claimed she learned Thomson Reuters’ data tools supported immigration enforcement activity in Minnesota. She said she believed the company was knowingly facilitating or contributing to unlawful conduct and violating constitutional protections and state law privacy, data and sanctuary city protections, which could extend to other jurisdictions including Oregon, where her federal lawsuit was filed.”
• “Little and about 200 Thomson Reuters employees voiced their concern that the company’s products might be being used in ways that violated the law in an open letter to Thomson Reuters’ executive leadership and board of directors.”
• “‘Thomson Reuters products may be used in ways that conflict with state and local laws in sanctuary jurisdictions, as well as data protection and privacy regulations at multiple governmental levels,’ the letter said. ‘When investigative tools enable federal agencies to access data in ways that circumvent state and local privacy protections, we risk facilitating violations of laws that fall under the jurisdiction of state attorneys general, local prosecutors and data protection authorities.'”
• “The letter requested transparency, due diligence disclosures, safeguard information and an all-hands meeting. Little claimed Thomson Reuters launched an internal investigation into her after the letter was received, then fired her for a supposed code of conduct violation, which Little asserted was pretext to disguise retaliation.”
• “In a statement responding to Little’s allegations, Thomson Reuters said, ‘We take employee concerns seriously and provide clear channels for colleagues to raise issues, as outlined in our Code of Conduct. As this relates to an individual employment matter, it would be inappropriate to comment further. We strongly dispute the allegations and intend to robustly defend the case.'”
• “Little claimed Thomson Reuters’ conduct violated Oregon’s whistleblower protection law.”
• “‘Oregon’s whistleblower law exists for exactly this situation. It protects employees who report in good faith that their employer may be breaking the law,’ Maria Witt, counsel for Little and Albies & Stark of counsel, said in a press release. ‘Thomson Reuters should have thanked Billie for raising concerns about the use of its products instead of hiding behind a vague Code of Conduct violation to punish an employee for exercising rights that Oregon law expressly guarantees.'”
• “The employees’ open letter was not the first incident of Thomson Reuters facing calls to examine its ties with ICE. Thomson Reuters’ long-term minority investor British Columbia General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) said in a statement to Law.com that it has been raising issues similar to those mentioned in Little’s lawsuit since 2020. The union called Little’s allegations ‘deeply troubling.'”
• “Employees under LexisNexis voiced similar concerns about their parent company RELX in an open letter and demanded it cut contractual ties to ICE.”
• “RELX subsidiary LexisNexis Risk Solutions entered into a $22.1 million contract with the DHS in 2021 to provide ICE with a database of public records, and the company has since extended that contract, according to public U.S. spending data.”
• “‘Given ICE’s record, it is clear RELX is doing business with an organization that regularly flouts the ‘rule of law’ principles the company says it upholds,’ the employees’ letter said. ‘We are concerned our employer’s parent company may be aiding threats to our safety, both on the job as journalists and as members of the public, since ICE now has latitude to target people for arrest based on criteria including real or perceived ethnicity or speaking a language other than English.'”
• “Employees also demanded in the letter that executives be transparent about RELX’s contract status, withdraw from the contract if it was renewed and answer employees’ related questions in a town hall.”

“Top law firm apologizes to bankruptcy judge for AI hallucination” —

• “One of Wall Street’s prominent law firms, Sullivan & Cromwell, wrote to a bankruptcy judge to apologize for a court motion that included inaccurate citations generated by artificial intelligence, according to a filing in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.”
• “In the April 18 apology, Andrew Dietderich, founder and co-head of Sullivan’s restructuring group, said the firm had been made aware of errors in an emergency motion filed in the bankruptcy of Prince Global Holdings.”
• “‘The inaccuracies and errors in the Motion include artificial intelligence (‘AI’) ‘hallucinations,’ according to the letter, which added that the firm had not followed its protocols in preparing the document.”
• “‘We sincerely regret the errors in the Motion and the burden they have imposed on the Court and the parties, and I apologize on behalf of our entire team,’ Dietderich wrote in the letter. The firm said it is taking steps to ensure the accuracy of all submissions.”
  “The law firm represents liquidators overseeing actions against Prince Group, a Cambodia-based conglomerate.”
• “It is very rare for big law firms such as Sullivan & Cromwell to include AI-generated errors in a court filing, said Damien Charlotin, who oversees a database tracking court cases in which an AI hallucination has been verified by a judge or acknowledged by the lawyers involved. More often, the mistakes are made by solo practitioners in cases involving many parties, said Charlotin, who is also a senior research fellow at French business school HEC Paris.”
• “The number of such cases has grown in recent years as AI use has spread, he said. His database shows more than 900 US cases, only a handful of which are in bankruptcy court.”
• “The errors underscore growing concerns about how law firms are using AI and what safeguards they have in place. Judges have reprimanded lawyers in some cases. Last year, a bankruptcy judge publicly reprimanded a former Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani senior counsel for submitting filings with artificial-intelligence-generated fake citations, although the firm itself avoided court sanctions.”

The specific AI tool or tools used were not disclosed, but Sullivan’s AI practice is very much involved with OpenAI.

And, for technology nerds in the room still reading this far down today’s update, Damien Charlotin’s AI database is fascinating! See his roster of: “AI Hallucination Cases” —

• “This database tracks legal decisions1 in cases where generative AI produced hallucinated content – typically fake citations, but also other types of AI-generated arguments. It does not track the (necessarily wider) universe of all fake citations or use of AI in court filings.”
• “While seeking to be exhaustive (1334 cases identified so far), it is a work in progress and will expand as new examples emerge. This database has been featured in news media, and indeed in several decisions dealing with hallucinated material.”

“Lawsuits Accuse Trio of Am Law 200 Firms of Running Afoul of Conflict Rules” —

• “Recent lawsuits accusing Am Law 200 firms of representing clients despite conflicts of interest highlight the need for both law firms and clients to take steps to avoid conflicts, according to attorneys specializing in legal ethics.”
• “‘Clients are much more offended by conflicts of interest than law firms and judges give them credit for,’ said Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz partner Ronald Minkoff. ‘When they find out that there’s been a conflict of interest that may have affected the outcome of the case, they get pretty upset.'”
• “Another case, brought in New Jersey federal court by Axenfeld Law Group on behalf of car repair company Empire Auto Protect, accuses Dickinson Wright of simultaneously representing a competitor and Empire and of using Empire’s confidential information to file a trademark case against the company.”
• “A third suit, brought by Bruck McInerney on behalf of Susan Glikin in Cook County, Illinois, accuses Kattne Muchin Rosenman of fraudulent concealment and legal malpractice. According to the complaint, the law firm represented both Susan Gilkin and her husband, James, when they revised their estate plans in 2017 and 2018. Susan alleges that she learned after she filed for divorce in 2024 that the revised plan strongly favored James, putting tens of millions of dollars that otherwise would have been marital property beyond her reach.”
• “The ethical responsibility to avoid conflicts lies with the law firm, and the client has to rely on trust to some extent, Minkoff said. ‘There isn’t always all that much that a client can do,’ he said. ‘They can do their own search on Lexis and attempt to see if at some point the law firm represented the other side, but most clients don’t do that.'”
• “Matthew Henderson, a partner at Hinshaw & Culbertson, agreed that avoiding conflicts is ‘mostly on the law firm.'”
• “Henderson added: ‘It needs to be more than just a perfunctory running of the conflicts. If the firm is found to have represented someone adverse to the client in the past, he recommends interviewing the lawyers to learn more.”
• “Sophisticated clients may agree to waive some conflicts in advance, and as long as those waivers are narrowly tailored, courts usually uphold them, Henderson said. But blanket advance waivers of any conflicts are generally unenforceable.”
• “In instances where clients conclude early on that the attorney representing them is conflicted, they can opt to waive the conflict or part ways with the attorney and request their money back.”
• “If the potential conflict spills into court, a party might file a motion to disqualify, which, if successful, might lead it to sue the allegedly conflicted firm to recover their legal costs.”
• “A client can also bring a lawsuit like those flagged by Radar, with claims for malpractice, negligence or breach of fiduciary duty, Henderson said.”

“Pot Co. CFO Says Attys Must Be DQ’d In Embezzling Suit” —

• “The former CFO of four related cannabis companies, who is accused of embezzling from those companies, is urging a California state court to disqualify the plaintiffs’ attorneys, saying there is a conflict of interest between the company plaintiffs and the individual plaintiffs.”
• “In a motion filed Monday, Ramin Benyamini said the Darling & Wilson PC attorneys should be disqualified from the suit against him, as the individual plaintiffs are all officers and shareholders of the entity plaintiffs, and the entity plaintiffs could have claims against them that won’t be pursued if they’re represented by the same attorneys.”
  The individual plaintiffs — Ashkan Motamen, Ali Ghazi, Eric Nomura and Michael Kumar — allege that Benyamini stole and appropriated funds while he was CFO of the entity plaintiffs, Luvbrite Collective, All Dots Connect Media Inc., LB Distro LLC, and Green Mind LLC. The suit also names as defendants a number of other entities and individuals they say helped Benyamini through a scheme involving fictitious loans, reporting false inventory and sales numbers, and other ‘phantom transactions’ to hide the movement of the funds.”
• “In Monday’s motion, Benyamini said that each of the individual plaintiffs had a fiduciary duty to oversee the entities and prevent his alleged misconduct, and as such the entity plaintiffs have potential claims against the individual plaintiffs.”
• “But with Darling & Wilson representing both sets of plaintiffs, those claims will never be brought up, Benyamini told the court, saying California’s appeals courts have recognized that such conflicts are especially problematic in the case of corporations that are owned by a small group of shareholders, such as is the case here.”
• “Where the only shareholders are also the officers and directors involved in such a dispute, allowing them to consent or attempt to waive such a conflict would render rules about conflicts of interest meaningless, Benyamini told the court.”
• “‘The entities’ independent interests in pursuing claims against their own management are being subordinated to the individual plaintiffs’ interest in presenting a united front against defendant Benyamini,’ he wrote. ‘This is precisely the harm that the concurrent conflict rules are designed to prevent.'”
• “This conflict cannot be waived, Benyamini wrote, as court rules prohibit representation even with consent where the attorney can’t provide proper representation to each affected client, and in this case, Darling & Wilson can’t represent the entity plaintiffs while also representing the individuals who those entities may have a claim against.”
• “Benyamini further argued that he has standing to seek disqualification because, as CFO and a substantial shareholder in the four entities, he has a substantial interest in ensuring that they’re properly represented.”

“Jones Day Disqualified as Bankruptcy Counsel to R.T. Vanderbilt Unit Before Asbestos Trial” —

• “A bankruptcy judge disqualified law firm Jones Day from representing an R.T. Vanderbilt Holding unit in its attempt to use chapter 11 to resolve asbestos-related liabilities at its nonbankrupt parent company.”
• “Judge Wendy Kinsella of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Syracuse, N.Y., ruled that Jones Day can’t act as bankruptcy counsel to former talc-mining company Vanderbilt Minerals due to the firm’s historical representation of R.T. Vanderbilt. ‘Approving the retention would compromise the integrity of the bankruptcy process in this very case, and the court is not willing to do that,’ Kinsella said.”
• “The judge said she understood her ruling was ‘a bomb that just dropped’ ahead of a trial on a proposed settlement between the subsidiary and its parent regarding their liabilities for more than 1,400 asbestos-related lawsuits stemming from past talc production.”
• “Vanderbilt Minerals filed for bankruptcy in February seeking a settlement that would shield its parent from existing and future talc-related asbestos claims in return for certain assets and the forgiveness of intercompany debt.”
• “A committee representing asbestos claimants has challenged the proposed deal, calling it an end run around the Supreme Court’s prohibition on releases for creditors’ claims against third parties. The justices in a 2024 ruling against Purdue Pharma held that such nonconsensual releases are beyond bankruptcy court’s power to grant.”
• “The committee sought to dismiss the bankruptcy case as a bad-faith litigation tactic and asked for Jones Day to be disqualified as bankruptcy counsel to Vanderbilt Minerals due to the firm’s many years representing the parent company.”
• “Vanderbilt Minerals has argued in court filings that any claims against its parent belong to its own bankruptcy estate, not to individual creditors. It also said Jones Day faced no conflict of interest because its representation of R.T. Vanderbilt concluded in September.”
• “Other corporate defendants that have tried to use bankruptcy to resolve tort liabilities have faced similar challenges to their choice of counsel due to alleged conflicts. Judges presiding over cases filed by Johnson & Johnson and 3M, however, allowed their chosen lawyers to be retained. Both those cases were subsequently dismissed.”

“Hicks Thomas DQ’d Over Aide’s Past Work For Other Side” —

• “Siding with two lower courts, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday held that Hicks Thomas LLP must be disqualified from a long-running suit over a hospital project because of a firm legal assistant’s past work for the other side of the case.”
• “The court said Lone Star State precedent is clear, ‘If a nonlawyer worked on the other side of a matter in a prior employment, there is a conclusive presumption that confidences were obtained from the prior representation and a rebuttable presumption that those confidences were shared with the new employer.'”
• “The justices said that the only way to rebut the ‘shared confidences presumption’ under ‘Turner’s rule’ is to show that preventative measures were taken by the firm to guard against any disclosure by the nonlawyer employee of information gained while working on matters for a prior employer and that Hicks Thomas had failed in that regard. Turner’s rule refers to a 2017 decision by the court in In re Turner, a case involving a nonlawyer who worked on one side of a matter and then switched law firm employers and worked on the opposite side of the case.”
• “Prior to joining Hicks Thomas, the legal assistant had worked for Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr PC under a lawyer who previously represented Apex Katy Physicians LLC and its managing member Pankaj Shah, the plaintiffs in a 2009 lawsuit against Adeel Zaidi, A.K. Chagla and Prestige Consulting for damages arising out of multiple transactions related to a hospital project.”
• “From 2009 to 2011, the legal assistant actively worked on the plaintiffs’ side of the case under a Munsch Hardt lawyer, the Friday opinion said. When the legal assistant joined Hicks Thomas in 2011, the firm had no involvement in the case.”
• “Munsch Hardt’s work in the case ended a couple of years after the legal assistant left that firm, the opinion said. After the plaintiffs won the case in the trial court, the defendants — Zaidi, Chagla and Prestige Consulting — hired attorney Robin Harrison to represent them on appeal. In 2016 the case was remanded by the court of appeals for a new trial.”
• “Harrison brought the case with him when he joined Hicks Thomas in 2016, five years after the firm hired the legal assistant who previously worked on the plaintiffs’ side of the matter while employed by Munsch Hardt, the opinion said.”
• “‘Significantly, as the defendants acknowledge, there is no evidence that Hicks Thomas or Harrison instructed her not to work on cases she had worked on in her prior employment,’ the opinion said.”
• “Between 2017 and 2022, the legal assistant performed work on the case when Harrison’s usual assistant wasn’t available, including filing some case documents in 2022 on Harrison’s behalf, which led to her name appearing in the record. The opinion noted that the plaintiffs’ counsel, Andrew Meade, realized in early 2023 that the legal assistant had previously worked on their side of the case when a Munsch Hardt lawyer was still co-counsel for the plaintiffs.”
• “Meade reportedly asked Hicks Thomas about the firm’s conflict screening procedures for nonlawyers.”
• “‘Harrison responded that the legal assistant did not recollect her prior work on the matter, had not shared any confidential information with him, and would be screened from the matter going forward,’ the justices said. ‘But the plaintiffs considered these steps too little, too late and moved to disqualify Harrison and Hicks Thomas in early March [2023].'”
• “A Harris County trial court judge granted the motion for disqualification, and in 2024, a state appellate court affirmed, leading the defendants to seek mandamus relief from the state’s high court.”
• “In finding that Harrison and Hicks Thomas must be booted from their representation of Zaidi, Chagla and Prestige Consulting, the justices said that the shared-confidences presumption cannot be overcome by denials of disclosure ‘but by prophylactic measures assuring that legal assistants do not work on matters related to their prior employment,’ adding that it has no reason to doubt Harrison’s testimony.”
  “‘Strict adherence is required,’ the justices said. ‘Accordingly, an instruction when a firm hires a nonlawyer is a best practice to guard against disclosures and conflicts. That said, if the conflict did not exist at that time, a failure to instruct may be remedied later to avoid disqualification.'”
• “In a footnote, the high court said, ‘We acknowledge that this may lead firms and their human resources departments to adopt pro forma instructions designed to merely satisfy this rule.'”
• “‘Although a perfunctory instruction may leave a less indelible imprint, the admonishment still provides valuable information and training to a new nonlawyer employee,’ the justices said. ‘We hope firms will go beyond these minimal requirements and instruct their legal staff in a manner to convey the significance of guarding against conflicts and protecting prior client confidences.'”
• “The high court rejected an argument from the defendants that Apex and Shah had waived the issue of disqualification because they did not move for opposing counsel’s ouster for about a year after the assistant’s name appeared in the e-file record as an employee for the defense-side firm.”
• Decision: here.

David Kluft asks: “Must a judge’s clerks, like Caesar’s Wife, be above suspicion?”

• “In a mass tort litigation involving a hotel fire in Puerto Rico and several phases of trial, both of the judge’s law clerks had brothers working as lawyers at firms representing plaintiffs (and one of the brothers had actually appeared in the case).”
• “This was not surprising because the case was so big that over 10% of the entire federal bar of Puerto Rico, and over half the large law firms in Puerto Rico, had appeared in it”
• “After two years of pretrial proceedings, and after the phase one trial, and six weeks into the phase two trial, some of the defendants moved to recuse the judge by arguing that the clerks’ relationship to their brothers created an appearance of bias.
• “The First Circuit affirmed denial of the motion, holding that it would not use the ‘Caesar’s Wife’ standard of ‘mere suspicion,’ which would make disqualification too easy to obtain for strategic reasons.”
• “Justice Breyer stated that the conflict here was ‘weak and remote,’ and even ‘assuming the family relationship raises a slight cloud, few knowledgeable people would expect that it would ordinarily cause most clerks to actually commit the serious ethical breach of seeking to influence a judge improperly.’ Additionally, Justice Breyer noted that the trial judge was fully capable of taking into account any potential bias by the clerks.”
• Decision: here.

“Firm Fights DQ Bid Against US Counsel In Chinese Arbitration” —

• “A Chinese law firm suing a Washington resident over unpaid arbitration bills has slammed an effort to disqualify its Seattle-based local counsel, saying that while one of its attorneys had worked at the law firm representing the woman, the attorney was entirely walled off from the case.”
• “Managing partner Zhizhou (Leo) Wang of Shanze Partners PLLC, the local counsel for arbitral award petitioner Beijing Dacheng Law Offices LLP, spoke with Bellevue, Washington, resident Yan Li’s lawyer last year in a call laying out all the arbitration issues, the Chinese law firm said in an opposition to the disqualification motion filed Monday.”
• “Wang informed Li’s lawyer at Harris Sliwoski LLP, Daniel Harris, in an Oct. 14 phone call that local attorney Emily Chen had never worked on the arbitration matter at Shanze Partners, had no access to the case file ‘and was walled off from the matter completely,’ according to the opposition.”
• “Whether Shanze Partners should be disqualified is not the real issue at stake, Beijing Dacheng said. Rather, it argued, Li’s motion seeks to delay resolution of the case and does not turn on ethics. After the Oct. 14 call, both Wang and Harris agreed the conflict was sufficiently addressed, and Harris chose not to seek relief from the court at that time, according to the brief.”
• “‘About six months passed, during which the court confirmed the arbitral award against [Yan Li],’ Beijing Dacheng alleged. ‘The court set a briefing schedule for entry of judgment. Respondent raised no issue. Then, on March 20, 2026, the very date respondent’s reply brief was due, respondent filed this motion seeking disqualification and a stay of all proceedings relating to entry of judgment.'”
• “The Chinese law firm added that Chen was merely a contractor attorney at Shanze Partners, where she worked on discrete tasks that had nothing to do with the Li arbitration matter. Shanze Partners and Li ‘parted ways’ three months before the motion to disqualify was even filed, the brief said.”
• “‘Disqualification is a drastic remedy, disfavored and subject to strict scrutiny, particularly when it is raised after significant delay,’ Beijing Dacheng argued. ‘Respondent sat on this issue for about half a year and raised it only when judgment was imminent. That delay alone warrants denial.'”
• “Li alleged in the March 20 disqualification motion that Shanze Partners should be taken off the case because Chen went to work for the American firm but didn’t disclose she had been involved in the arbitration case while working for Harris Sliwoski. While there, Li claimed, Chen was the lawyer who communicated ‘most directly and regularly’ with Li throughout the litigation over a petition to confirm a foreign arbitration award against her brought by Beijing Dacheng.”
• “Chen then ‘became affiliated’ with Shanze Partners, but didn’t disclose the affiliation to Li’s counsel at Harris Sliwoski, Li alleged. Also, Li said that based on Shanze Partners managing partner Wang’s account, Chen did not accurately disclose her involvement in the matter to Shanze Partners itself.”
• “In a March 20 declaration, Daniel Harris, Yi’s attorney, said Chen worked on the arbitration enforcement suit from the beginning and was ‘substantially’ involved in it during her time at the firm.”
• “‘Ms. Chen communicated directly and regularly with respondent and, because of language considerations, served as the primary point of contact between the firm and respondent throughout the representation,’ Harris said.”
• “He added that Chen was immediately fired by Harris Sliwoski on Oct. 2 after Harris learned about her affiliation with Shanze Partners by discovering her appearance on Shanze Partners’ website.”

“Your Client Is Talking to ChatGPT About Their Case. After ‘Heppner,’ That’s a Discovery Problem.” —

• “You have a client right now who is typing their case details into ChatGPT. A personal injury client describing their injuries and uploading medical records. An employment client recounting what HR said in the termination meeting. Both recapping what you told them on the phone last week. They think it is private. It is not. And after United States v. Heppner, opposing counsel has a federal court opinion telling them how to use that against your client.”
• “Most of the commentary on this ruling has come from Big Law defense shops advising corporate clients on internal AI policies. That tracks. But the real exposure lands on the plaintiff’s side. Your clients are the ones awake at 2 a.m., anxious, asking a chatbot what their case is worth. Defense attorneys are not losing sleep over Heppner. They are sharpening discovery requests.”
• “On Feb. 10, Judge Jed Rakoff ruled in the Southern District of New York that 31 documents a criminal defendant created using a consumer version of Claude were not privileged. The defendant had fed information from his attorneys into the chatbot, generated defense strategy reports, and later shared them with counsel. The court held the materials failed on at least two, and likely all three, elements of privilege: an AI tool is not an attorney, the consumer platform’s privacy policy negated any expectation of confidentiality, and the defendant acted without counsel’s direction.”
• “Rakoff did leave one door open. If counsel had directed the client to use the AI tool, the court suggested it might function like a third-party expert working under the attorney’s supervision. That question remains unanswered.”
• “Here is where it gets dangerous for plaintiff firms specifically. Heppner did not just create new documents with AI. He fed privileged attorney communications into the platform. Information his lawyers gave him went into Claude as prompts. Judge Rakoff’s opinion suggests this may have waived privilege over the original attorney-client communications, not just the AI outputs.”
• “Think about what that looks like in your practice. Your client takes your case evaluation, your strategy notes, your assessment of liability, and types it into ChatGPT to ‘understand it better.’ Under Heppner’s reasoning, the defense can argue the privilege over your advice just evaporated. That is not a hypothetical edge case. That is a Tuesday.”
• “The discovery angle cuts both ways, and plaintiff attorneys should be thinking offensively here. Corporate defendants and their employees are using AI tools to summarize internal investigations, evaluate liability exposure, and draft talking points. If those conversations happened on consumer platforms without counsel’s direction, the same Heppner logic could make them discoverable. Plaintiff firms fight against well-resourced corporate legal teams every day. This is a new tool in the belt.”
• “What to Do About It. Update your engagement letters. Add explicit language that anything a client types into a consumer AI platform about their case may be discoverable. This belongs right next to your social media warning.”
• “Have the conversation at intake. Ask directly: are you using ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI tool to research your case or your injuries? Most clients will not volunteer this. You need to ask and you need to explain why it matters.”
• “Document attorney direction. If you want a client using AI for case preparation, put your instructions in writing. Specify the tool, specify the purpose. Heppner drew a bright line between client-initiated and attorney-directed use. Stay on the right side of it.”
• “Expect AI-targeted discovery. Heppner was a criminal privilege ruling, but the weight of legal commentary says the reasoning extends to civil discovery. Defense counsel reads the same case law you do. Requests for production targeting AI usage are coming.”
• “Heppner applied old privilege principles to new technology. The conversation you need to be having with every new client is simple: if you are using AI to think about your case, tell me now, and stop putting case details into consumer chatbots. That one conversation could save the case.”

“Silent Ransom Group leaked another big law firm: Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe” —

• “Jones Day wasn’t the only big law firm to recently fall prey to threat actors variously known as Silent Ransom Group, Luna Moth, Chatty Spider, or UNC3753. DataBreaches will refer to them as the Silent Ransom Group (‘SRG’).*”
• “In January, SRG gained access to the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP (‘Orrick’). In terms of gross revenue, Orrick is not as large as Jones Day. Still, it has over 25 offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and its gross revenue exceeded $1.5 billion in 2025.”
• “Orrick’s name may sound familiar because in March 2023, it was the victim of a data breach that affected 461,000 people. A consolidated class-action lawsuit was settled in 2024, with Orrick not making any admission of guilt but agreeing to create an $8M non-reversionary fund as part of the settlement.”
• “Having dealt with the costly 2023 breach, would they be eager to avoid another class action by paying SRG in the hope that the breach never becomes widely known? Or would they decide not to pay at all and weather any storm?”
• “In communications with SRG, DataBreaches asked several questions, one of which was, ‘Did the fact that Orrick had settled that class-action for $8M have any effect on you targeting them? Did you think that a big firm that has just made a big settlement would be more likely to pay to avoid a second scandal or big lawsuit?’ They replied:”
  • “As We can see, this organization is not learning from its mistakes. Typically, when dealing with firms from the top 100 law firms, they all, without exception, recognize the seriousness of the situation and make the only correct decision.”
  • “They offered $1,000,000 to resolve this matter, but that was far less than the amount requested, and We decided to publish their details. This was the first top-100 law firm to offer such a meager sum.”
• “SRG informed DataBreaches that it first gained access to Orrick on or about January 20, 2026, and remained in its network for about a week. The attack did not involve any malware, as SRG never deploys malware.”
• “On February 6, 2026, a representative from Orrick appeared in chat and negotiations began. SRG shared the chat logs with DataBreaches, but only after negotiations had failed.”
• “From statements made in the chat by both parties, it seems that SRG contacted employees and Orrick’s clients at times. The negotiations appeared calm on both sides, with Orrick’s representative saying at one point:”
  • “I can tell you are experienced in this subject matter, which means you must also know thet [sic] lawsuits happen and information becomes public no matter what the outcome is here. It does not mean we’re unwilling to find an agreement, but we want to speak honestly about what a deal does and does not accomplish. I hope that is OK with you. We do not agree that [redacted] million is a reasonable expectation for purchasing the word of a stranger. It does not ease any of the other costs we will face from this. If you have a different number in mind that is more realistic, we are happy to review it and begin a productive dialogue.”
• “SRG responded by reviewing some facts and listing the names of some of the clients whose private information was now in SRG’s hands. Orrick did not come back with what SRG would consider commensurate with the scope and volume of the data involved. On February 18, Orrick offered $225,000.00 and subsequently flat-out told SRG that while they were open to making a deal with SRG, ‘there is no 7 figure deal to be had here.'”
• “On February 23, SRG added Orrick to its leak site and leaked all of the data. Orrick’s negotiator noted the development and offered SRG a final $400,000.00 offer if the post was removed immediately. It was removed for a while, but SRG rejected Orrick’s subsequent $1M final offer and re-leaked it all.”
• “Some might think that any hack-and-leak gang would be happy to get $1M and would take the money and run. But what SRG did is similar to what DataBreaches has seen the Daixin Group and others do in other incidents: they refuse an offer that seems way too low so that future victims will learn the group will leak rather than accept an offer they do not consider reasonable.”
• “DataBreaches’ inspection of the data tranche identified many files that appeared to be confidential. DataBreaches will not focus on the more confidential information, but will provide a sense of how little file security there was for some files. In one of several index files in the leak, 77 filenames included ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ in their names. All of those files were in plaintext with no password protection. Some of them contained confidential files relating to litigation. Some contained confidential and sensitive employee information.”
• “As part of its settlement in 2024 IN RE: ORRICK, HERRINGTON & SUTCLIFFE, LLP DATA BREACH LITIGATION, Orrick also agreed to improve its security:”
  • “As further consideration to the Settlement Class, Orrick has agreed to make numerous business practices changes relating to data security. Orrick has also confirmed that, as a direct result of Plaintiffs’ filing of the Action, Orrick has already implemented several improvements to its data security. Ex. 1, §8.1. These enhancements include improving its detection and response tools, enhancing its continuous vulnerability scanning at both the network and application levels, deploying additional endpoint detection and response software, and with the help of an industry leading cybersecurity vendor, performing additional 24/7 network managed detection and response.”
• “As the FBI noted in its private industry notification last year, law firms are frequent and lucrative targets due to the sensitivity of the information they store, and SRG, in particular, has been targeting them since 2023. Jones Day and Orrick are not the only law firms SRG has hit — and leaked — recently. DataBreaches may have more on this in the near future.”

“Judges Overseeing Landmark Oil Cases Have Financial Stakes in Oil Companies” —

• “A dozen federal judges have presided over some of the most consequential environmental lawsuits in Louisiana’s history despite having investments in or business connections to the petrochemical companies being sued, an investigation by Floodlight, WWNO/WRKF, and Type Investigations has found.”
• “Their ties took various forms: holding stock or corporate bonds while presiding over the cases, having previously worked as attorneys for the oil companies, receiving large sums of money from investments in the companies prior to hearing the cases, leasing mineral rights to defendants, or having a spouse who was a partner at a law firm defending the oil companies.”
• “But even when they appear to have direct conflicts of interest, almost none of those judges broke the ethical rules governing the judiciary.”
• “‘To the extent they’re following the rules, they can’t really be faulted,’ said Charles Geyh, a professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law and an expert in judicial disqualification. ‘But from a systemic standpoint, do you really want judges to be drawn from a pool of people who have a stake in the industry?'”
• “Examples include:”
  • “Judge Carl Barbier of the US Eastern District Court of Louisiana held over $100,000 of corporate bonds in five oil companies while presiding over four different cases in which one or more of those companies was a defendant.”
  • “Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown, of the same court, reported that she or her husband traded tens of thousands of dollars of Exxon and Chevron stock while she presided over a case in which both companies were being sued.”
  • “Judge Jerry Smith of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of oil companies in one of the cases after receiving over $100,000 in mineral royalties since 2013, when the litigation first arrived in federal court. “
• “Judges must be impartial in their rulings and avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Yet, in practice, that standard is poorly enforced. The judiciary itself decides in most cases what constitutes a conflict, and its current guidelines state that judges may even receive payments from defendants while a case is ongoing—so long as the judge’s ruling will not impact the amount they get paid.”
• “In Louisiana, where many judges profit from petrochemical investments, the question of whether the courts can be trusted to fairly judge the oil industry has enormous stakes.”
• “An investigation by Floodlight, WWNO/WRKF, and Type Investigations found that 12 of the 46 federal judges who have already made rulings in the coastal damage lawsuits had investments in or business connections to petrochemical companies that were defendants in the cases.”
• “Since 2013, nine of these judges have collected nearly $1 million in income from their investments in the defendants, according to an analysis of their financial disclosures. That income was gained during the period while the cases have been litigated in federal courts, though not exclusively while the cases were on each of the judges’ dockets.”
• “It’s difficult to determine if and how financial ties influenced judicial decisions—and many of these judges, like Barbier, actually ruled against the oil companies. But even the appearance of impropriety can undermine trust in the rule of law.”
• “‘It’s only natural for the public to be increasingly suspicious about whether those judges are a little too friendly with the industry to be impartial arbiters,’ said Geyh.”
• “Even beyond the direct ties to the defendants, judges’ investments in the fossil fuel industry more broadly could raise eyebrows. The outcome of these coastal damage cases could impact the industry at large, with the potential to establish a road map for anyone seeking to hold oil companies accountable for environmental destruction.”

“Judicial Ethics Opinion 25-160” —

• “Digest: A judge’s knowledge of an attorney’s or law firm’s contributions to the judge’s prior campaign for election to non-judicial office does not necessarily require disclosure or disqualification in all instances involving that attorney or law firm, but the judge should consider all relevant factors in reaching a conclusion about potential recusal.”
• “Rules: 22 NYCRR 100.2; 100.2(A); 100.2(B); 100.3(E)(1); 100.5(A)(1)(h); 100.5(A)(2); 100.5(A)(5); Opinions 23-41; 10-135; 08-40; 04-106; 02-06.”
• “Opinion: A new judge, who had previously campaigned for election to a non-judicial public office within the past year, asks about his/her ethical obligations regarding attorneys that appear in front of him/her who either donated, or whose law firms donated, to the judge’s prior non-judicial campaign. Since the prior campaign was for a non-judicial position, the judge, as a candidate, knew who contributed to the campaign and often personally solicited contributions from donors.”
• “A judge must always avoid even the appearance of impropriety (see 22 NYCRR 100.2) and must always act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the judiciary’s integrity and impartiality (see 22 NYCRR 100.2[A]). In particular, a judge must not allow family, social, political or other relationships to influence the judge’s judicial decision-making or judgment (see 22 NYCRR 100.2[B]). Further, a judge is disqualified in a proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality ‘might reasonably be questioned’ (22 NYCRR 100.3[E][1]).”
• “We have recognized, in other contexts, that a ‘candidate for non-judicial office is not subject to the same exacting standards’ as a judicial candidate (Opinion 08-40). For example, a judicial candidate may contribute to their own campaign as permitted under the Election Law (see 22 NYCRR 100.5[A][2]), but must not otherwise personally solicit or accept campaign contributions from any source (see 22 NYCRR 100.5[A][1][h]; 100.5[A][2]). Instead, a judge who wishes to accept campaign contributions from others must form a committee of responsible persons to ‘solicit and accept reasonable campaign contributions and support’ on the candidate’s behalf (22 NYCRR 100.5[A][5]). Additionally, we have advised that the judicial candidate should be shielded from knowing the identities of contributors and the amounts contributed (see Opinions 10-135; 02-06).”
• “Nonetheless, we have advised that in situations where a judge inadvertently learns of an attorney’s contribution to his/her judicial campaign, that fact, standing alone, does not mandate the judge’s disqualification. ‘In and of itself, the judge’s knowledge of a contribution, does not automatically give rise to an inference of partiality’ (Opinion 04-106; see also Opinions 23-41; 10-135).”
• “After considering these or other appropriate factors, ‘if the judge is confident he/she can be fair and impartial, no disqualification is required. If, on the other hand, in his/her discretion, and having considered all relevant factors, the judge concludes that the specific circumstances might give rise to a publicly perceived appearance of partiality,’ the judge should ‘disclose and recuse, subject to remittal’ (Opinion 04-106).”

“Kennedy Center Lawyer Accused of Conflict of Interest in Booking His Band” —

• “A high-powered lawyer named Elliot Berke, who serves as the general counsel at the Kennedy Center, has been accused of attempting to book his own dad rock cover band, The DePlorables, for a performance at the center’s Speakeasy lounge. However, the Kennedy Center staff reportedly cited concerns about a potential conflict of interest and the band’s lack of professionalism, leading to the booking being denied. There are conflicting reports about whether Berke was actually invited to play but declined.”
• “This incident is part of a larger narrative around the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the Kennedy Center, including installing allies in key positions and plans to rename the building. The attempted booking of The DePlorables and another band, Yes, showcases the potential influence and conflicts of interest that can arise when personal interests collide with institutional roles.”
• “Berke, the Kennedy Center’s general counsel, allegedly tried to book his band The DePlorables, which he describes as the ‘worst band you’ve ever heard,’ for a performance at the center’s Speakeasy lounge. However, the Kennedy Center staff reportedly denied the booking due to concerns about a potential conflict of interest and the band’s lack of professionalism. There are conflicting reports about whether Berke was actually invited to play but declined.”
• “The alleged incident occurred in April 2026.”

More on AI use and privilege from David Kluft: “Can a pro se party’s AI use be protected by the work product doctrine?” —

• “In a CO employment dispute, the parties got into a discovery dispute over the use of AI. The defendant wanted the pro se plaintiff to reveal what kind of AI he was using to review confidential material. The plaintiff claimed this information was protected by the work product doctrine.”
• “The Court distinguished U.S. v Heppner (SDNY), in which a represented criminal defendant used AI on his own and not at the behest of counsel, and therefore the work product protection did not apply to his chatlogs.”
• “By contrast, the Court found that in this case, there was no counsel on whose behest AI would be used so there was no separation between client and counsel, and in addition the civil rules afforded broader work product protection to parties than the criminal rules.”
• “Therefore, ‘some’ work product protection did extend to the pro se party’s use of an AI platform. However, the mere identity of the AI platform being used is not work product because it does not reveal the party’s mental impressions, case strategy and legal resource allocation.”
• “The Court issued a protective order restricting the use of AI to platforms that did not disclose confidential information to third parties and that allowed information to be deleted.”
• Decision: here.

“Washington court blocks insurer from using assigned malpractice claims against defense counsel” —

• “A Washington appeals court just told liability insurers they cannot sue their own retained defense counsel using malpractice claims assigned from their insured.”
• “The April 6 decision from the Washington Court of Appeals draws a firm line around a recovery strategy that some insurers have turned to when defense counsel’s alleged negligence drives up the cost of a claim. The ruling will likely prompt liability insurers operating in Washington to rethink how they manage risk when the lawyers they hire to defend their policyholders perform poorly.”
• “The dispute traces back to a personal injury at Vertical World, an indoor climbing gym. Michael Vandivere fell and was injured, allegedly because of a defective auto belay device manufactured by C3 Manufacturing LLC. Vandivere sued, and C3 turned to its primary liability insurer, Great American E & S Insurance Company, for a defense. Great American agreed to defend C3 but did so under a full reservation of rights – meaning it preserved the option to later deny coverage depending on how the facts developed.”
• “Great American retained attorney J. Scott Wood to handle C3’s defense. Wood initially practiced at Foley & Mansfield PLLP but moved to Sinars Slowikowski Tomasaka LLC in early 2022, and C3 retained Sinars as its new defense firm. At Sinars, Wood worked with attorney Christopher Furman on the Vandivere lawsuit.”
• “That is where things went sideways. Between April 2022 and April 2023, Furman visited two Vertical World gym locations – including the one where Vandivere was hurt – on what the complaint described as dozens of occasions. Neither Furman nor Wood updated C3’s discovery responses to disclose those visits, even though discovery obligations required it.”
• “Meanwhile, C3’s excess umbrella carrier, Houston Casualty Company, notified C3 that it was rescinding its $4 million policy, alleging that C3 had made material misrepresentations on its insurance application. Wood, who had already disclosed the existence of the Houston Casualty coverage to Vandivere, did not update C3’s discovery responses to reflect the rescission.”
• “Then came a conflict of interest. In April 2023, Wood left Sinars and joined Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani LLP – the same firm that was representing Houston Casualty in its coverage dispute against C3. For about two weeks, Wood continued to represent C3 while his new firm simultaneously represented Houston Casualty on the opposing side. When the conflict was disclosed in May 2023, Wood and Gordon Rees withdrew from representing C3, leaving Great American scrambling to find new defense counsel just weeks before trial.”
• “New counsel quickly disclosed what prior counsel had not. The parties learned about Houston Casualty’s attempted policy rescission, and Vertical World informed Vandivere that Furman had visited its facilities more than two dozen times – all without disclosure. Vandivere moved for sanctions, and the trial court obliged, awarding monetary penalties and signaling that it would instruct the jury to draw a negative inference from C3’s discovery failures. Vandivere then took the position that the misconduct effectively obligated Great American to cover any judgment in full, regardless of its policy limit.”
• “Facing that pressure, Great American settled the case for $5 million – well above its $1 million primary policy limit – in addition to court-ordered sanctions against C3 and Sinars. As part of the settlement arrangement with C3, the insured assigned all of its legal malpractice and related claims against the defense lawyers and their firms to Great American.”
• “Great American then sued the defense attorneys and firms, asserting malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty both on its own behalf and as the holder of C3’s assigned claims. The superior court dismissed Great American’s direct claims but allowed the assigned claims to proceed.”
• “The Court of Appeals reversed on the assigned claims. The core of the ruling is that Washington public policy does not permit an insured to hand over its legal malpractice claims against defense counsel to the liability insurer that retained that counsel, at least not where there is a potential conflict between insurer and insured. A reservation of rights defense, the court reasoned, inherently creates that potential for conflict.”

“When should counsels disclose judges’ conflicts? Responsibilities addressed in new ABA ethics opinion” —

• “If a lawyer knows or should know information in a court proceeding that would likely warrant a judicial disqualification, they have an obligation to disclose it, even if the judge doesn’t, according to an ethics opinion released Wednesday by the ABA.”
• “Caselaw holds that lawyers have an overarching duty of candor to the courts, according to Formal Opinion 522, published April 8 by the ABA’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility.”
• “‘Judges are expected to raise recusal questions themselves,’ according to the opinion, citing Rule 2.11 of the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct.”
• “However, if the judge fails to do so, the obligation extends to attorneys under Model Rule 8.4(d) of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which prohibits attorneys from engaging in conduct ‘prejudicial to the administration of justice.'”
• “However, an attorney’s obligations to disclose information that might require a judge to recuse themselves is tempered by the attorney’s duty of confidentiality under Model Rule 1.6, which prohibits revealing client information without their informed consent.”
• “The formal opinion lists four illustrations, which focus on prior employment connections, campaign contributions, a spouse’s law firm involvement and a counsel’s business relationship with a judge’s family member.”
• Full opinion: here.

“Outside Counsel Guidelines: Power, Ideology, And The Evolution Of The Corporate Bar” —

• “Outside Counsel Guidelines (‘OCGs’), terms of the lawyer–client relationship imposed by corporations, are a significant development in the practice of law by large corporate law firms (‘BigLaw’). Among the most controversial OCGs are those that expand on law firms’ fiduciary obligations, thereby restricting their future clientele. The organized bar maintains that rules of professional conduct should restrict lawyers’ acquiescence to these OCGs because they limit clients’ access to legal services and undermine lawyers’ independence without advancing corporate clients’ legitimate interests.”
• “This Article shows why the bar’s effort has (very recently) deservedly failed: corporate clients have a legitimate interest in demanding greater loyalty than the rules provide as well as in expanding on other fiduciary protections, and the bar’s avowed concerns about clients’ choice of counsel and lawyers’ autonomy are not significantly implicated in this context.”
• “At the same time, the Article shows that the bar has other good cause for concern. It argues that by treating BigLaw firms as service providers rather than trusted professionals, OCGs contribute to corporate lawyers’ loss of influence and standing as wise counselors and to the corresponding decline of their traditional commitment to promoting the public good through their legal work. This analysis contradicts the conventional understanding of how corporate law practice is evolving. The traditional pendulum account states that power and standing swing internally within the corporate hemisphere, historically from general counsel to BigLaw and now back to in-house counsel. Our revisionist account shows that power has shifted from the corporate bar to corporate clients.”
• “The account we develop explains for the first time seemingly contradictory contemporary practice realities in the corporate hemisphere of the legal profession that others have struggled to understand. If BigLaw firms have lost power, how have they remained so profitable? And if they have not lost power, why have many firms capitulated to the Trump Administration?”
• “We show that in response to their loss of power in the twenty-first century, BigLaw firms have restructured. This restructuring has successfully mitigated BigLaw’s loss of power and allowed the firms to remain profitable. But law firms’ restructuring further weakened their commitment to practicing corporate law as a public calling and promoting the public spirit of the law and the rule of law. This helps explain why, at the start of the second Trump Administration, highly profitable law firms declined to oppose Executive Orders targeting the legal profession.”
• Full paper: here.

“Law firm Jones Day says hackers accessed client files” —

• “Jones Day, a leading U.S. law firm, said on Monday that it suffered a data breach after hackers posted client materials online.”
• “Jones Day, which represented President ​Donald Trump in his 2016 and 2020 election campaigns, ‘experienced a cyber ‘phishing’ incident in which ‌an unauthorized third party accessed a limited number of dated files for 10 clients,’ a firm spokesperson said in a statement.”
• “The hackers claimed to have targeted Greg Castanias, who leads the Jones Day ​team handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, according to a screenshot they posted of purported negotiations between them and two members of the firm’s information security and technology staff.”
• “The Silent Ransom Group has been targeting law firms since 2023 ‘likely due to the highly sensitive ‌nature ⁠of legal industry data,’ the FBI said in a notice it circulated last year.”
• ‘Jones Day, with 2,400 lawyers, was founded in Ohio and is known for defending large corporations. The firm represented Trump in his first two presidential campaigns as the Republican nominee, and several of its attorneys landed senior ​positions at the White House ​and Justice Department during ⁠Trump’s first and second terms.”
• “Jones Day said in 2021 that it was among companies affected by the hack of a file-transfer program by a group ​known as Clop. Law firms, which frequently possess confidential client data relating to ​corporate deals ⁠and litigation, have been increasingly targeted by hackers and other cybercriminals.”